BT To Buy UK 4G Leader EE For £12.5 Billion 39
DW100 writes: The UK mobile market looks set for a radical shake-up after BT confirmed it is now in final stage discussions to buy EE for £12.5bn. The move will see the telecom giant return to the mobile market for the first time in over a decade and make the company the leader in both fixed and mobile markets. Whether or not telecom regulator Ofcom will agree to such a deal, though, remains to be seen.
so BT sell Cellnet, then buy it back? (Score:2)
Let me run the numbers, in 1999 Cellnet was worth around £7bn - right around the time that BT bought out Securicor's stake, giving Securicor a return of many thousands of times its original capital injection of £4million in 1983. In 2002 Cellnet demerged from BT and relaunched as O2. Year on year, Cellnet/O2/EE has consistently compounded its profit margin.
Makes perfect sense.
Fuck me...
Re: so BT sell Cellnet, then buy it back? (Score:5, Informative)
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That's a lot of acronyms, isn't it? (Score:1)
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You are assuming they are all acronyms - BT is not, it used to be an acronym for British Telecom but that changed ages ago as the company was colloquially known as "BT" and thus chose to change its name to BT. EE also isn't an acronym, but again it used to be for "Everything Everywhere" but again the company renamed itself.
The "UK" is, but 4G arguably isn't, its the common name of a technology.
Re:That's a lot of acronyms, isn't it? (Score:5, Informative)
My friends who use it, assure me that EE stands for "Extremely Expensive".
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As a BT Customer, I can assure you that it stands for "Bloody Terrible", and the buyout is only feasible because the telecomms regulator is as toothless as a wet cabbage.
My friends who use it, assure me that EE stands for "Extremely Expensive".
As an EE user I have to disagree. It actually stands for "Eencredibly Eencompetent."
As I discovered when they contacted me to suggest I go from Pay-As-You-Go to Pay-Monthly, on a plan that was actually financially advantageous. Only to find out the next time I was abroad, a week later, that there was no roaming activated on Pay-Monthly. I spent a week attempting to get through to customer service with no success ("We estimate we'll be with you in 1m", for an hour and a half). When I finally managed to
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Odd, since I rang up EE the day after getting my pay monthly contract (I switched from O2) and had them enable roaming without any issue - wasn't on hold for all that long either, a couple of minutes max.
The only limit they had was that they wouldn't unlock the phone until I had been with them for three months, to reduce fraud (where someone takes out a phone in a stolen identity, has the phone unlocked, and then ships it to Africa before the first bill hits the victim).
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Actually, even if they did stand for something, they'd be initialisms, not acronyms. /pedantry
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If BT do buy EE, will they be called BEE TEE?
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or EECellnet?
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Because we want Poland for ourselves...
Great (Score:5, Interesting)
The worst and second worst ISPs in the UK are joining forces to create a perfect storm of uselessness.
Fuck BT (Score:3)
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Two fewer EE customers coming up (Score:3)
Apart from British Gas (obviously), BT are the worst company in the UK.
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My wife and I would rather go back to sending messages by carrier pigeon than become BT customers ever again. Our EE phone contracts won't be renewed.
Apart from British Gas (obviously), BT are the worst company in the UK.
You must have overlooked G4S
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corporate greed and incompetence? check.
consumer frustration and outrage? check.
idiots in government 'regulating' and approving market quashing consolidation? check.
just another day at the zoo here in the u.s. glad to see some of our 'best' makes it back to the old country. cheers!
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I'm noticing a trend here.
British Telecom - bastards
British Airways - crap
British Gas - rip-off
British Petroleum - dirty
Probably best to avoid companies with "British" in the name.
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BT, BA and British Gas were all former state-owned companies the government sold off in the 80s. The service 'improved' so much that everybody now hates them with a passion.
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Note that while " large ISP/Telco company." is not wrong it's something of an understatement. BT is the former state monopoly telco in the UK.
AIUI BT openreach (the part of BT that owns the physical lines) has an effective monopoly for about half of the UK households. For most of the rest they are competing against virgin media but virgin media don't sell wholesale. Theres a few small upstarts arround too but they tend to have negligable coverage areas.
Fortunately we have reasonablly effective regulation wh
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Theres a few small upstarts arround too but they tend to have negligable coverage areas.
BT is required to allow third parties to install equipment in the exchanges ('local loop unbundling'), and while most of the companies that take advantage of this are small local affairs, TalkTalk has quite a lot of coverage on LLU exchanges. Since BT won't sell naked ADSL lines, they've priced themselves completely out of the market in areas with Virgin Media coverage.
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AIUI EE is currently owned by deutsche telekom and france telecom, so this is one former state monopoly telco buying a buisness off other fromer state monopoly telcos, not a takeover of an indpendent buisness.